Song Analysis Of Irving Berlin's Song 'This Land Is Your Land'

Song Analysis – ‘This land is your land’
‘This land is your land’ is one of the United States’ famous folk anthem written by Woody Guthrie in 1940. It is a response to Irving Berlin’s song ‘God bless America’, which describe Woody Guthrie’s ideal and imaginable America.
Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma, 1912. His parents were both philharmonics, and taught him a lot of folk tunes. Unfortunately, Guthrie’s childhood was a tragedy – his sister’s death, a destruction of his home, a financial ruin of his father and an incurable disease of his mother. Guthrie was suffering a different childhood from others. When his grew up, the Great Depression dealt him a heavy blow and led him a vagrant life. Due to Guthrie’s bleak background, majority of

The song in answer and criticism to Irving Berlin’s ‘God bless America’.
Irving Berlin was born in 1888. He became a successful songwriter on Tin Pan Alley by the late 1910s. During World War I, Berlin was drafted into the U.S army and was commanded to write a morale-boosting tunes and shows for the soldiery. He composed the song ‘God bless America’ for the revue ‘Yip, Yip, Yaphank’ in 1918, but he thought the lyrics were too solemn and it did not fit so he did not use at last. Later, in 1938, with the influences of World War I and the rise of Adolf Hitler, the song was revised and re-introduced as a ‘peace song’.
The main purpose of Berlin were: the entire United States from the western Rocky Mountains to the central Great Plains, from Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean to Niagara Falls in the North, would stay out of war. People should pray to God, then God will bless and peace for the nation, let America prosper and

Land belongs commonly to all population, like Guthrie said ‘this land is my land, this land is your land’. The words ‘You’ and ‘I’ here, are not indicate the whole population, but refer to lower-class workers or civilian population. However, the high wall was served for excluding a part of people. It appears illogical. Besides, the bulk of ‘private property’ was owned by the riches, or be defined as ‘capitalists’. For the capitalists, they led a life of pleasure and high quality. On the contrary, the middle lower class – the working people took charge of low-tech works, normally with low-education. Therefore, they had less income and they were difficult to have their own building. Their income and diligence were not only an indirect proportional, but also suffered from machination of rich and starvation. In society at that time, lower class was always exploited by the capitalists. Guthrie is in favor of abolishing land